


Becomings

by PeopleCoveredInFish



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Kurapika Phantom Troupe, Canon-Typical Violence, Consensual, Explicit Sexual Content, Love Triangles, M/M, Melodrama, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Power Dynamics, Self-Indulgent, Tropes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-26
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-06-04 13:57:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6661213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeopleCoveredInFish/pseuds/PeopleCoveredInFish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing really has readied Kurapika for the first sight of that ribbon of black that will form the body of the spider, that which he has sworn to eradicate from the earth, carved permanently into his flesh. </p><p>It’s desecration, yes. But it’s a small price to pay for the ultimate revenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

> “A becoming-animal always involves a pack, a band, a population, a peopling, in short, a multiplicity.”--Deleuze and Guattari, _A Thousand Plateaus_

His phone is still ringing when he reaches the top of the stairs. Just days ago, he had ignored his phone while standing resolute in the foyer of the hotel suite, and someone had been coming up the stairs for _him_ \--

Silence now from his jacket pocket--he had given way to the decorous codes of the mafia for the evening, donning a suit so as to better blend in with the crowd. He should go back down and see to Neon. He should turn around.

Shoes sinking into the plush red carpet, soles crushing its soft bristles, he moves against it like moss on stone as he crosses the hallway.

Kurapika steps forward, and opens the ballroom door.

Seeing Chrollo for the first time feels like swallowing glass, a slow and steady internal rupture that cuts up Kurapika’s mouth and catches in his throat. The man is young, younger than he had expected, and perfectly contained by his surroundings, his suit; the length of cloth wrapped around his forehead. He looks incapable of damaging so much as a coat of fresh paint. It sends a column of rage up Kurapika’s spine.

“Are you the chain-user,” Chrollo asks, smiling mildly through the question.

The anger slams into the center of Kurapika’s brainstem like a wall of water.

“You shouldn’t ask what you already know,” says Kurapika, hearing the words walk off his tongue before he can register having spoken, his eyes behind his black contacts brightening with the change.

He clenches his right hand, silver links jingling together in collectivity. “Then I won’t ask whether you’re a conjurer or a manipulator,” replies Chrollo.

The statement sweeping over Kurapika is a paralytic; settling onto his extremities like an early-morning frost. He had managed to fool Uvogin into thinking he was a manipulator, using the deception as an opening to wrap him in invisible chains. Chrollo has just invalidated any such attempt at deception on his own person.

Kurapika takes a breath. “And you won’t ask why I’m here?”

“No,” says Chrollo, “that I would like to hear you say for yourself.”

There’s no time to wonder what he might be getting at, because then Chrollo is saying, “This is all your fault, you know.”

The words slip under the frayed edges of Kurapika’s rage, whipping it into a frenzy. That he has not gone for Chrollo’s throat can only be attributed to his having locked his muscles into place with the last fragments that constitute his presence of mind.

“Excuse me?”

“I told them to go wild,” Chrollo explains, gesturing to the windows and the expanse of Yorknew beyond the hotel. “I suppose I should thank you.”

He says this last as though he’s actively considering it, as though the death of one of his own was merely an excuse to leap to the greatest heights of human depravity. Blood thrums in Kurapika’s ears as he breathes in, out, in, out.

“You’d be quite an asset, to the right people,” says Chrollo, “so, considering the alternatives, you ought to think about my offer very carefully.”

“Your offer.”

Chrollo hums noncommittally. “Join us.”

Kurapika had sensed it coming, under the skin of his supposedly being an asset, but the blunt end of it hits him full-force nevertheless. He’s gripped by a rush of nausea that strains his sides and weights his lungs with what feels like water.

“Alternately,” says Chrollo, after having waited for Kurapika to respond, “you could attempt to fight me. Or isn’t that why you came here?”

The thread of Kurapika’s life knots then, snagging on this particular moment, on the precise and unyielding nature of the choice.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to decide quickly,” Chrollo continues, “Assassins are tracking me, and these two are actually good at their jobs.”

It’s not as though Kurapika has forgotten his assignment from Nostrade, but he hadn’t sensed anyone approaching, either. The room, with its lush carpet and high ceiling, stands innocuous around them.

What chance does he really have against Chrollo, right now? While he had tested his chains on the strongest member of the troupe, this man already knows he’s a conjurer, so Kurapika is lacking the element of surprise.

Chrollo has barely moved throughout the duration of their conversation, leaning almost casually against a table in the center of the room. What kind of wound, or perhaps another identifying mark, is that bandage hiding?

Joining the Ryodan. Kurapika crosses his arms over his chest, fighting back the instinct to retch, acrid bitterness rising in his throat. It may be his best opportunity. He could do just as he had originally planned to rise up in the ranks of the mafia: curry the Troupe’s favor, win their trust. Chrollo doesn’t know about his chain jail ability. Strike hard, from the inside. It would surely be a better chance of destroying the Troupe’s foundation, and eradicating them from the surface of the earth.

Gon had called, the other day. Kurapika, waiting in the foyer of the hotel suite for the man he knew would be coming for him, hadn’t picked up. Would that his friends have already left Yorknew City--how much could they have figured out, by now? If they’re paying even the least attention to the rumours swirling around the city like so many dried leaves, then surely at least Killua has realized that Kurapika has a large part in what is unfolding tonight. Kurapika doesn’t put as much faith in Gon, or in Leorio, for that matter.

That was Leorio, for you. A useless noodle, straining under the weight of his own bravado; his hidden kindness.

“You’re smiling.”

Chrollo’s voice cracks through Kurapika’s reverie. It’s a jolt, that voice, lake-smooth and tinged with the slightest shade of amusement. Kurapika can feel the baseline threads of Chrollo’s nen, moving against his own like an electric current.

Seeing them again was always going to be too dangerous. Better that they never get involved, that they live happy, fulfilling lives as far away from him as they are long.

“Let’s move out,” says Kurapika, and Chrollo’s aura shrinks back.

“Good,” replies Chrollo, voice just edging into pleased from this side of neutral.

The three of them would be having dinner right about now. Leorio, whose ability to prepare a perfectly good roast chicken had confounded them all once he had access to the proper supplies, was surely cooking something--unless, perhaps, it was a night for takeaway.

Kurapika and Chrollo exit through the back door, Kurapika halfway towards keeping a safe distance from Chrollo before realizing the inherent impossibility of such a task and stepping back to flank him.

If he couldn’t feel their pursuers before, he can now--a chill slipping down the back of his neck, and the uncanny feeling that he’s only sensing them because they want him to.

They start down the staircase, Chrollo reaching out to trail his fingertips along the sleek line of the wooden banister as they descend. Kurapika’s phone begins to ring again. He silences it, just as Chrollo raises an eyebrow a fraction of a centimeter. “Your employers are expecting you?”

Neon and her father are safely ensconced in one of the upper rooms, waiting for the ambulance to arrive. “They’ll realize something’s wrong, but they don’t have the resources to do anything about it.”

He pauses. Senritsu will be hearing the news of his disappearance shortly, if she hasn’t already. “They will have to assume that I’m dead.”

“And well you would be,” says Chrollo, words filtered through a smile, “You know that, don’t you?”

Senritsu, would she mourn him? This afternoon she hadn’t remarked upon his move to formalwear, but he could catch in one glance the sum of her worries. Perhaps she had anticipated exactly this.

The sense of open space around him expands infinitesimally as they round the next set of stairs. “They’ve stopped following us,” Kurapika notes.

“Yes,” says Chrollo, “I hired someone to assassinate their client.”

Kurapika is about to answer when a door opens on the landing below, and a short woman emerges to motion them into the room, pushing her thick-rimmed glasses up the bridge of her nose with a casual impatience.

They move down the remainder of the stairs, Kurapika’s brain hailing his limbs, urging them forward, for all that being moments, meters apart from _them_ scrapes at the inner chambers of his heart.

Chrollo holds open the door, lightweight; paneled with wood like any other hotel room door, and Kurapika follows him inside.

The suite, though built to be open and airy, is for Kurapika, only walls, thin plaster behind brightly patterned wallpaper. Three people on the couch in front of the TV, one standing behind the side table, and one, one running towards him in an unbridled fury.

“Chain bastard!”

Hair bound in a topknot, katana in hand, Kurapika’s would-be assailant is centimeters, moments away from slicing through the coffee table, and then he is against the wall on the far side of the room, next to the window, venetian blinds casting a tower of horizontal shadows across his shocked face.

The bright-faced blond man on the couch turns to one of his companions. “Did danchou do that?”

“This is Kurapika,” says Chrollo, and the room stills, “number eleven.”

The words rise around Kurapika like a fever. The man holding the katana shakes with it; marches towards Chrollo, grasping at determination. “Danchou, please…”

“You know the rule, Nobunaga,” says the man with stretched earlobes, by the side table. He’s about as big as Uvogin had been, maybe broader. It’s a comparison that settles unhappily on the edges of Kurapika’s consciousness.

The man called Nobunaga is red-faced and pleading, holding back a watershed of tears. “This is Uvo we’re talking about, Chrollo!”

He wields their leader’s given name with the speed and precision of his katana, banking on the sharpened efficacy of insubordination.

“And Kurapika” says Chrollo, manner unphased, “bested him singlehandedly.”

Nobunaga turns to face Kurapika. “You killed him.”

It isn’t a question. “Yes,” says Kurapika, meeting the flat plains of Nobunaga’s tone. And then, when Nobunaga’s gaze hardens against him, he steadies himself; adds, “It was a fair fight.”

Doubt pools in Nobunaga’s eyes. “You swear it?”

The other Troupe members lean comfortably into the conflict, the girl with the high ponytail shifting forward to rest her head in her hands. “On my life.”

Laughter is wrenched out of Nobunaga then, in shallow peals. He points the katana straight at Kurapika. “On something that _matters_.”

Pairo and he, lying side by side in a meadow dotted with wildflowers, the sun pulling the pink from their cheeks. Pouting at his mother over the half-kneaded dough, only to find her pouting in return, hair matted, the air clouded with flour. “Very well,” says Kurapika, shaking away the past, “I swear on my memory.”

Nobunaga tilts his head, looking at him carefully. Kurapika stands still under the appraisal, and they lock eyes.

The walls of the room, already close, tighten around them.

Nobunaga nods.

The door opens to admit a very small person of indeterminate gender. Chrollo, who has, until now, been watching the situation unfold between his troupe’s newest member and one of its oldest, says, “The bodies, are they ready?”

The new arrival nods, their long hair moving to cover even more of their face. “They are just outside.”

Chrollo hums. The cheery blond moves towards the windows. “You think we can see them from up here?”

He leans on the sill and peers out, breaking into a smile that’s all teeth. “Hey, I look pretty good! Thanks, Kortopi.”

Kurapika steps forward, and moves towards the window in an effort to see what’s going on, neglecting in his single-mindedness to heed Nobunaga, who, it would appear, has had the same idea. Begrudgingly, they take their positions by the window, as far apart as possible while still being able to see.

The courtyard, two stories down and across the way, is lined with the sprawled and bent corpses of half a dozen of the Genei Ryodan. Chrollo’s body--thin, limber--bears the weight of youthful surprise, mouth slightly open in wonderment, eyes wide and glassy, a cross tattooed on his forehead in violet intricacy under battle-tousled black hair.

Behind Kurapika, Chrollo tells Kortopi to prepare for the auction, and Kurapika tastes bile.

They relocate, moving through the lower reaches of the hotel like they have no secrets worth keeping. The few people they meet--most are already in the auditorium--are dispatched quickly by the woman in the glasses, whose nen ability leaves no traces.

The stage doors welcome them in creaking wood. “Shalnark,” says Chrollo, once they are backstage, “the master of ceremonies.”

“Oo-kay,” says the blond man, tone shifting into musicality as he sets off in the direction of the dressing rooms.

“Machi and Kurapika,” Chrollo continues, “take care of security.”

Ponytail girl nods and looks at Kurapika, who follows her behind the curtain to where the auction goods are being kept, their footsteps silent against the energy of the crowd on the other side of the wall.

Hisoka is leaning on the doorframe, flicking open and shut a lighter that sparks his bored face into brightness and shadow. While he displays none of the standard tells of recognition upon seeing Kurapika, the corner of his mouth twists up in minute appreciation. Crates line the walls, piled on top of one another, a sprawl of heights and edges in the half-light. “New recruit?”

Machi purses her lips. “Something like that.”

Yellow eyes evaluate Kurapika, tracing him with an uncomfortably familiar intimacy. “Congratulations, you get first crack at the next person to walk through this door.”

The approach of an uncloaked presence wafts down the hall beyond the doorway like smoke, curling in Kurapika’s lungs, calling him forward, against all his higher instincts, to snuff it out if he is to survive this. And while he puts a low premium on his own life, survival is a prerequisite for vengeance.

“That’s very sportsmanlike of you,” Machi is saying, arms crossed and face painted with doubt.

“Please, Machi,” says Hisoka, posturing with a manicured hand, “I’m always this nice.”

The man that moves into the doorframe from the hallway is someone familiar to Kurapika. Hisoka reaches out with his lighter, and the man thanks him distractedly, unlit cigarette in his mouth, just before Kurapika’s dowsing chain crashes into his left temple.

He’s one of the Dons’ people; he’d been in charge of briefing the assassins called in to dispatch the Genei Ryodan. He had laughed at Kurapika’s being classed within the former group.

The man cries out and staggers, and Kurapika rakes his fingers through the air, wrapping the chain around the man’s neck. Using chain jail would be tantamount to breaking his oath, and while the dowsing chain isn’t designed for this, the man isn’t strong enough to break its hold. His hands grapple with its unyielding embrace, face tinged a faint purple, knees buckling, but unable to sink to the floor for all that Kurapika’s nen is supporting him like a deadly spine.

He kicks out, making contact with the wall before connecting with one of the crates, the porcelain vase inside hurtling to the floor before getting reeled in, caught on Hisoka’s bungee gum.

Kurapika tightens the chain, conscious of the necessity of his success, his ethical sensibility snagged on the impossible slowness of one man’s death.

The acrid smell of urine, and the man looks right into Kurapika’s eyes, a guttural plea rising from the base of his throat, and that’s when Kurapika takes hold of the knife in his pocket and slashes him from ear to ear, blood streaming hot through his fingers and running down the chain links in rivulets, breath wrested from him in gasps.

“Must be some ability,” says Hisoka, amusement bubbling up in his tone, “if you’re willing to shed that much blood to avoid showing it to us.”

Kurapika remains hunched over, hands on his knees heedless of the blood now staining his suit trousers, hair hanging limp over his face.

Machi’s gaze, when he finally meets it, is guarded. “I’ll deal with any others.”

He’s about to thank her, but he doesn’t know whether she spoke out of pity or practicality, and he isn’t about to hazard a guess. Under ordinary circumstances, other people’s pity sparks outrage in him. At the moment, he can’t muster the energy. “Come find me back at base,” she adds, and he looks back up, “I can tattoo you.”

She disappears through the doorway, releasing a small sigh as Hisoka follows her down the hall.

Kurapika stands in the towering shadow of the crates for moments, minutes, clutching the knife, blood dripping down his hands to pool on the floor. A small shadow passes over the doorway, and Kortopi steps into the backstage area, accompanied by two others, presumably of the Ryodan, and Shalnark. The tallest, a man with white-blond hair that makes him appear eyebrowless, stalks up to Kurapika and scrutinizes him. “What the hell is this?”

Unsure as to whether ‘this’ refers to himself, the mess of the body, or the entire situation, Kurapika chooses to remain silent, not loosening his grip on the knife. The man scowls and grabs Kurapika by the shoulder. “I _said_ \--”

Shalnark laughs; steps in to separate the two. “Phinks, don’t be mean. Kurapika’s new.”

The man called Phinks wipes his hand, bloody from where it had touched Kurapika, on his tracksuit. “Okay, whatever. Not my problem.”

He gives Kurapika a last, surveilling look, eyes narrowed, before pushing past him to tear the lid off of the nearest crate, revealing an ornate jade footstool. “Look at all this crap.”

“I can get the emcee to unpack the boxes,” suggests Shalnark, but Phinks waves him off.

“What are you looking for?”

The smaller man’s voice is soft, almost sinuous behind his bandanna. “I’m not looking for anything,” says Phinks, “It’s all ours anyway, so what’s the point?”

He moves through the boxes in a flurry, the others watching in degrees of amused silence. A boutique’s worth of furniture and exotic ornamentation emerges--an emerald-encrusted clockwork bird that actually sings, an ancient-looking book bound entirely in wood, a pebble-sized orb so black it cannot reflect light.

A cylindric case displaying two floating eyes, smouldering in red.

Kurapika nearly lets the knife fall to the ground before reflexively tightening his fist, his stomach roiling. “Kurapika?”

Shalnark’s having spoken takes a moment to register, sinking through the thick fog of Kurapika’s senses. “I have a change of clothes in my bag,” Shalnark says, casual as weather-talk, “I think they’d probably fit you.”

As it turns out, Shalnark is a little broader in the chest, but the purple dress-shirt and black jeans fit Kurapika well enough. Washing the dried blood from underneath his fingernails isn’t anything like catharsis, but he sinks into the blankness of clean skin and the smell of soap.

The auction proceeds, Kortopi handing off freshly-made copies of each item on the docket to another Troupe member, a woman in a sleek black dress who parades them onto the stage. The master of ceremonies jabbers on, Shalnark’s needle protruding from the back of his neck, and the crowd eats it all up, cluelessly embroiled in bidding wars for the artfully-crafted fakes.

By the time they gather back at base--the hollowed-out framework of an old church--the celebrations have reached fevered heights, and Kurapika accepts a few shots of something that practically singes his throat on the way down, before seeking out Machi.

All he can hear is his pulse, and he asks Machi to repeat her question. “Where do you want it?”

Her voice is stripped down, bereft of judgement. “On my chest,” says Kurapika, hearing the words slip out of his mouth as though spoken by someone else, “right over my heart.”

Machi nods, and the needle buzzes to life, powered by nen. Kurapika breathes steadily through his nose as Machi’s needle approaches. He has prepared himself for this moment, but nothing really has readied him for the first sight of that ribbon of black that will form the body of the spider, that which he has sworn to eradicate from the earth, carved permanently into his flesh.

It’s desecration, yes. But it’s a small price to pay for the ultimate revenge.


	2. Chapter 2

> “Stay in the shadows
> 
> Cheer at the gallows
> 
> This is a roundup
> 
> This is a low-flying panic attack”
> 
> \- Radiohead,  _ Burn the Witch _

He is walking towards his village against the slipshod contours of his skull and he is walking away, the pre-dawn stars pinpricks of light cut into a brocade sky. The sense he carries of himself, the self-knowledge of body and mind, is broadening, spinning out from the center of him in waves, enfolding every bird and blade of grass under the forest canopy, moonlight caked under his fingernails. Before dawn, after, anchored into his past and seeping into the future, but now, always now, they come, and the fringe of sky peeking into the canopy is rent apart with their knives, their guns.

Pairo in front of him, skin fire-blistered and slipping off, reaching towards him in an asymptotic arc, Kurapika chained to himself, weighted with iron, and it’s not moonlight under his fingernails, it’s the rusty black of grave dirt, he’s crawling with it. His open mouth spewing burnt and sour earth, a blade whispering down the back of Pairo’s neck, the quiet resonance of Chrollo’s smile--

Kurapika wakes up, sweat-drenched, clawing frantically through his shirt at the spider blackening his skin. 

His back has stiffened during the night, from lying on the concrete, which is littered with wine glasses and empty beer cans. The others all appear to be sleeping. It must be early morning. 

The tattoo on his chest should be an afterthought of pain, mostly healed already by virtue of its being created through nen. Instead, it’s throbbing, the tissue where he scratched it red and puffy. He stands, walks through the clutter and clustered limbs, towards the back door, in search of an outside spot to relieve himself. 

Instead, he finds Hisoka. Kurapika stays partly hidden in the shadow of the old church, cloaked in zetsu, ready to approach with caution. Hisoka is perched on a fencepost, legs crossed, humming lightly. “That was quite the display yesterday,” he calls out. 

The blood, when it had run down Kurapika’s fingers, was warm, almost pulsing with life as the man’s own had ebbed away. Kurapika sighs and releases his zetsu, stepping into the light. “I hope you were entertained.” 

He means for it to strike hard, stopped up with the fury that’s always alive in him, just under the skin, but something falls flat. “It won’t be long, you know,” says Hisoka, “before they realize that something’s wrong.”

“I’ve taken precautions.”

Hisoka sits up straighter; fiddles with a blade of grass he must have snatched from the concrete, where it grows in unruly tufts. “Have you? Because, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think that your abilities came at the cost of a vow you made regarding their sole use against a certain group of people. But,” he continues, hopping down from his perch, “if you’ve taken precautions…”

Kurapika simmers with the truth of it, fists clenching involuntarily with a chime of chains. “What are you proposing?”

Hisoka’s grin sends warning signals up Kurapika’s spine. “A reorientation of your nen principles.”

“With you as my teacher? Don’t quit your day job,” Kurapika says, and squints. “Whatever that is.”

“I’m hurt. Surely you don’t think you can survive for long, like this.”

“And what,” says Kurapika, “makes you think survival is my objective?”

Hisoka laughs as though Kurapika has said something particularly witty. “Your chains are made for killing spiders, aren’t they? And what are you, now?”

***

Nostrade looks at the man sitting across the desk from him, and lights his pipe. His office encircles them in rich furnishings and dark wood paneling, foreboding and close. “You have next to no knowledge of nen, no medical degree, and yet you see yourself as a candidate for treating my daughter. Care to explain?”

“Yeah, well,” says Leorio Paladiknight, clearing his throat, “I know my record is...underwhelming.”

The desk stretching out between them stands at the room’s center, cherry wood and heavy on its feet, a few sheets of paper that constitute a resume and cover letter spread across the surface. “It’s nonexistent!” 

Leorio shifts forward in his seat, eager to object. “But I’m skilled enough to have been accepted into a medical program, and I do have some training. Now, I’m not saying that’s necessarily enough--”

“Aren’t you?”

“I’ll leave that to your discretion,” Leorio says, placing his hands on the desk, fingers spread. “If you just give me a chance, I think I might be able to help her.”

Nostrade puffs on his pipe, exhaling a stream of smoke. For a moment, the possibility floats unmarred through the air, and then Nostrade says, “Forget it. I’m not going to take the risk.”

Leorio had been edging out onto the hope that Kurapika--who had been missing for days--could be found like this, traced backwards through his last known associates. The information, of course, had been courtesy of Gon and Killua. 

Now, Leorio could only hope to get to Kurapika before the Genei Ryodan could locate him, and it looked like this latest strategy was shaping out to be another dud. 

He rises from his chair, grumbling about having to call another taxi, and takes his leave without so much as nodding at Nostrade. He hasn’t smoked since he was drowning in medical school applications, but his bloodstream aches for want of nicotine.  _ Kurapika _ , he chides inwardly, and the reprimand goes unfinished, caught up in a knot of immeasurable exigencies and the memory of the way Kurapika’s mouth tilts slightly upwards when he knows he’s winning at whatever stupid, inconsequential game they’re playing this time. 

He rounds the corner, humming in thought, and walks headlong into someone else. “What is your problem,” he barks at the newcomer, who appears to be a girl in her mid teens, her hair strung through with beads and pushed back with a cloth headband. 

She brushes what has got to be imaginary dust off of the arm that had made contact with Leorio. “You don’t know who I am,” she says, an unsettling smile edging across her face , “otherwise you wouldn’t be shouting at me.”

“I don’t care if you’re the Nostrade brat herself,” snaps Leorio, checking his watch. “I don’t work for you.”

He gestures emphatically, briefcase bumping against his knee. “And I wouldn’t if you paid me! I hate this place.”

The girl tilts her head to one side. “Not even if I paid you? Are you sure?”

Leorio peers at her over his glasses. “You  _ are _ the Nostrade brat.”

“Neon,” she says, brightly, and then, “I could have a chat with Daddy, you know.”

“With--why the hell would you?”

She frowns. “You don’t seem to like me very much.”

He knows that he’s brash, knows it like he knows the back of Kurapika’s head when he’s pretending not to listen, but cruelty has never been an option. “Well, I--”

“It’s okay,” she says, and there’s a small smile, “no one really likes me, only they don’t dare show it. You’re different.”

“Is that...good?”

“It’s new,” she says, and grabs his hand. 

Together, they traverse the carpets that Leorio had just trodden on in his haste to leave the mansion. The building is something old and sunken, even through its immense wealth. He can’t picture Kurapika here. 

“I just got out of the hospital,” says Neon, “are you a doctor?”

“...I’m not  _ not  _ a doctor,” says Leorio, after a moment, “sort of.” 

Neon’s laugh is sharp, overpowering, like pungent perfume, and yet even this sharpness gets absorbed into the gravity and stillness of the walls and drapery. 

When they reach Nostrade’s office, Neon enters without knocking. “Daddy,” she begins, Leorio in tow, “this man is going to be my new doctor.”

Nostrade looks at Leorio as though he were a particularly hardy and persistent species of weed. “Neon, darling,” says Nostrade, “he doesn’t have the credentials.”

“I don’t care what he has or doesn’t have,” says Neon, whose mouth has turned down at the corners, in perfect pout formation. It takes about five years off her age. 

“It’s just not possible,” is the reply, and that’s when Neon begins to cry. 

Leorio, who is backing up as much as possible while trying to remain unnoticed, nearly knocks over an antique lamp. “Then I won’t ever write a fortune again, not for the rest of my life,” says Neon, voice cracking through her tears. 

Nostrade tries to backpedal. “Neon, I--”

“He might be the only one in the world who could cure me! And you’d never know!”

Leorio watches Nostrade as he measures the possibility of damming the flood against Leorio’s continued presence in his life. “Okay,” says Nostrade, “I suppose we can give him a trial period.”

The tears evaporate. “Thank you, daddy,” says Neon, before slipping out the door, skipping every other step. 

Nostrade looks at Leorio, one eyebrow gently raised. 

“I will do my best to help her,” says Leorio. 

Really, it’s the least he can do. “You should pack your things. We’re leaving in the morning, for the Aleksanteri Casino.”

Leorio had hoped to stay in Yorknew, at least until he could pick up Kurapika’s trail, but there was nothing for it. He only hopes that, somehow, Kurapika will appear at the end of this particular tunnel. 

***

Almost everyone is awake, when Kurapika returns. In the morning light, Chrollo is illegible, a pillared smudge of a man, working into the edges of Kurapika’s peripheral vision before he sweeps into full view. A proud face, and empty eyes, which is almost worse than any potential chill he could expect to find there. The cross on his forehead is challenge and benediction both. 

Shalnark asks, “Danchou, are we splitting? Or do you have another job for us?”

The framework of the church towers around them, stone and concrete cracking high into the darkness. Kurapika sits on one of the empty crates, hunched over himself, stretching his fingers. The tall woman who had been in charge of wheeling out auction items the night before is standing next to him; she disassembles her gun and is beginning to clean it when Chrollo answers. 

“Today we’re going to begin preliminary scouting for our next hit. Feitan, Pakunoda, Phinks, Nobunaga, and,” he pauses, “Kurapika. Your assignment is to steal the floor plans.”

“I am  _ not  _ working with  _ him _ ,” spits Nobunaga. 

Chrollo pulls out a coin. 

Minutes later, Kurapika is squished into the backseat of a sedan, Nobunaga and the man with the soft voice--Feitan--on either side, bumping shoulders every time Phinks steers around a curve. “I’m going to kill whoever thought of that goddamn coin rule,” says Nobunaga, edging as far as possible away from Kurapika in the tightness of the space. 

“You so much as touch Danchou,” says Phinks, “and I’ll rip your head off through your ass.”

“We could probably get these plans online,” says the woman in the front seat, swiping lipstick over her full pout, right as Nobunaga is muttering, “Jesus, relax.”

“Boring,” says Feitan, eyes rolling slightly towards the ceiling.

“And that’s why I didn’t mention it earlier,” the woman replies. 

Phinks taps on the steering wheel as they speed through a red light. “Pakunoda. Cigarette?”

“Not for you, no,” she says, rolling back her lipstick and putting it away in her purse. 

“C’mon, Paku,” Phinks is saying, the low edge of a whine building, they’re flying through a residential neighborhood, and Kurapika interrupts, “Whatever it is we’re after. Won’t they be on alert once we’ve picked up the plans?”

Nobunaga’s laugh breaks like glass in the small space. “‘S the fucking point, kid.”

“Only fair to let them know we’re coming,” says Feitan, voice flatlining, and Phinks lets out a small huff of breath that hints at irritation, or amusement. Kurapika gets the feeling that it’s difficult to tell, with him. 

Kurapika tries to relax against the hump of pleather that constitutes the middle seat. It wouldn’t do to look too tense. 

Silence as they pull up to the first checkpoint of the security firm. The little hut is built out of steel, reflecting the far larger complex up the drive. Phinks rolls down the window. “Please state your name and business,” drones the man behind the dutch door.

Phinks reaches through the open window and grabs the man’s face. His fingers slip under the hinge of his jaw, and, in one swift, fluid motion, he rips it off, bone and sinews cracking. The man’s bloody tongue hangs down his neck, lolling there like a sea slug, and the car hurtles through the security gate, pieces of twisted metal scraping the fender and nearly piercing the windshield. Within moments, they’re being swarmed by security personnel with advanced nen abilities. 

Kurapika, by virtue of having been in the middle seat, doesn’t quite make it out of the car in time to see anything of the subsequent attack beyond the slicing silhouette of Nobunaga’s katana. 

_ Hisoka had said, “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you know particular nen techniques for attacking people outside the Genei Ryodan, and I’ll let this whole thing go.” _

_ “I can handle this on my own,” Kurapika replied decidedly, turning to walk around the building, set on his original objective for going outside.  _

_ “I’ll take that as a no, then,” said Hisoka. _

Crouched behind the open car door, Kurapika activates ken, cloaking the entirety of his body in gyo until he has a chance to really evaluate his rapidly changing surroundings. Nobunaga and Phinks are flying at the small wave of nen users advancing upon them; Feitan beheading most of the rest with a bored flick of his wrist. Pakunoda empties her gun into the bodies moving towards her, seemingly having no need to reload. 

Kurapika steps away from the car and, releasing ken, drops into a fighting stance, index finger extended. 

_ “Why do you even care?” asked Kurapika, having turned around.  _

_ “Oh, I don’t, particularly,” Hisoka said smoothly, “only your decision to join up is the most interesting thing that’s happened all week, and I’d hate to see it go to waste just because of a little problem like limitations.” _

The chain that emerges from his finger is steeped in bitterness, links crafted from a closed heart, knotted at the end with a smooth silver ball, slender spikes jutting out from its surface. Kurapika swings it elliptically, he can practically hear the crackle of nen as the chain whips through the air around him. 

_ “Our agreement specifically states that our working together doesn’t extend beyond the boundaries of exchanging information.” _

_ Hisoka shrugged. “Chalk it up to a change in circumstances.” _

_ Kurapika crossed his arms. “And you don’t think that I can do this on my own, because?” _

_ Hisoka’s face cracked open with his smile. “You’re still talking to me.” _

The chain shreds the space between Kurapika and his opponents; carves it to ribbons as he dances around them, feet tracing out incalculable patterns. He waltzes between a pair of guards, letting his chain follow in his wake, spiraling around their necks, the spikes sticking into the melon-softness of their skulls. The fight cycles through his bloodstream, as comfortably if it has been there all his life. 

Death perches on the corner of Kurapika’s conscience like a bird, oil-black and talons thin as tendons. 

_ “So, what are you getting out of this, exactly?” _

_ Kurapika, having revealed just enough about his abilities as was necessary, was studying Hisoka.  _

_ “You,” Hisoka said, and flashes a card at him, the two of hearts.  _

_ “I don’t think so.”  _

_ “A fight,” intoned Hisoka, drawing the word out like taffy.  _

Feitan and Phinks are the first to reach the main building. The bodies of several dozen guards lie strewn on the ground behind them. Pakunoda and Nobunaga follow suit. 

Kurapika stands in the center of the carnage, chains withdrawn but still visible, flesh caught in a creeping numbness. He begins walking before any of the others can look back. 

The security complex is sprawling, likely built up from nen-enhancing foundations, frame and panels running silver in the afternoon light, the buildings crouched low to the ground as though primed for attack. The group congregates near a side entrance to the main building, which is protected with a security card reader. Phinks’ grin of anticipation could unknit iron, and he kicks the door in. 

Inside, it’s as silent as a sepulchre, floor to ceiling reinforced concrete, and Nobunaga mutters “what the  _ hell _ ,” because, well, they’re in the center of a maze.

_ Kurapika scoffed. “You want to fight me, again? Why would you, after dropping out the first time?”  _

_ Hisoka’s gaze sharpened around the words. “You weren’t ripe yet." _

They arrange themselves in a circle instinctively. Kurapika ends up between Feitan and Pakunoda, the three of them facing what had, outside, been empty space and was now corridors upon corridors of twisted wall. 

“Could be a manipulator,” says Feitan, just loudly enough to be heard, “or maybe a conjurer.”

Pakunoda nods and says, “Let’s split up. I’ll go with Kurapika.”

Nobunaga narrows his eyes at that, but he follows Feitan and Phinks down one stretch of concrete, winding into the dark.

This is how Kurapika ends up back to back with Pakunoda, chained hand outstretched and straining with the will to fight while the latter directs her gun into the shadows. The stones of her spine move against his; he can feel the lines of her diaphragm expanding and contracting with every breath. The unsavory tactility of it shreds through his system. He’s facing nigh infinite echoes of concrete, supported only by the tailored angles of Pakunoda’s business suit.

“Move,” says Pakunoda, “I’ll follow.”

“Backwards, in heels? No, you go first, I’ll walk backwards.”

“Such a gentleman.”

Kurapika frowns into the darkness. “You’re making fun of me,” he accuses. 

He could kill her, right now, like this. 

Walking backwards, moving against her, he cedes territory to the thought. Unabashed cowardice, of course. Not that any of them deserved better. 

The light dims as they advance into the maze, their shadows thrown across the floor like clay on a wheel, stretched and stumbling. 

It was an issue of trust. They had to believe in him, first. 

The corridor recedes with Kurapika’s every step back, the walls glinting like obsidian. “Stop,” he says, voice hushed, and they halt.

“I know,” comes Pakunoda’s voice from behind him, matching him in volume.

“Did you notice the change,” asks Kurapika. 

The wall next to him now bears a reflective surface, clear enough that he can see his own outline, even in the relative darkness. “No,” says Pakunoda. 

Kurapika hadn’t seen it either, hadn’t noticed the gradual disappearance of the concrete, the creeping liquidity of the mirror, slow as their footsteps. He reaches out and brushes a finger over the surface. It’s stone-smooth and cool against his skin. 

His reflection traces his movements, calm against the beat of his pulse through his fingertips. Pakunoda’s focus is on the expanse of shadows before and behind them. She carries her gun as though it were an extension of her arm, her body taut as a cello string. Kurapika looks into his own eyes, darkened with contacts, and exhales, turning back to Pakunoda. 

She’s pointing the gun straight at him. 

Something grabs him by the shoulder, slamming his back into the wall. His head snaps to the right with the impact, giving him a glimpse of his captor’s grasp on him. 

It’s his own right hand. 

Pakunoda’s shot explodes into the glass behind him, and the hand lets go, its chains shaking against his own. 

Kurapika opens his mouth to thank her, but she shakes her head and points behind him. He whips around. Kurapika’s reflection has stepped out of the wall, dragging broken glass behind it, and followed by Pakunoda’s. 

This version of him glitches between two and three dimensions, dampened in metallic tones but clearly bedraggled and still wearing Shalnark’s spare clothes, strands of his hair arcing around him in static and sweat. 

The image reaches out to him, chains spinning. Kurapika leaps aside, and the chains crash into the wall behind him, glass fragmenting into ever finer shards. “Keep shooting,” shouts Kurapika, “They’re breaking apart.”

He dodges and rolls, narrowly escaping a roundhouse kick to the face. The grains of glass scrape against his skin, and he moves back into a fighting stance, ignoring the scratch of them under his shirt. Pakunoda is engaging her reflection in what looks like an elaborate dance, firing only when Kurapika is out of range. 

Kurapika’s image is, it finally strikes him, comfortable in chaos. When the reflection releases his new ability, it’s with a smile that edges up under his skin in its satisfaction. Kurapika also calls forth the chain from his index finger, ducking as the mirrored chain, with its spiked ball, whooshes overhead. 

The two chains collide, Kurapika’s wrapping around the glass, and he flicks his wrist to tighten it. His mirrored self glares at him, eyes blazing red for an instant, and then the whole thing shatters. 

Kurapika hopes that Pakunoda hadn’t noticed the red, but she’s busy eliminating her own reflection. With a final shot to the throat, it, too, collapses. 

They shake the glass from their clothes, brushing shards onto the floor between them. The wall facing them has almost completely crumbled with the force of their reflections’ escape from it, and they step through its open maw and into what appears to be another quadrant of the maze. 

It’s only when Kurapika’s shoes hit the carpet that he realizes they’re in a different part of the building. He and Pakunoda exchange glances; she raises her gun and he stands poised and ready to fight. “Excellent,” says a voice from the other side of the room, “I had wanted to get a closer look at the two of you.”

Kurapika shifts towards the voice, raising his hand in threat. An exceedingly tall and thin man sits behind a desk in the corner of what Kurapika realizes must be an office. There are mirrors on every wall. 

“You’re the manipulator,” says Kurapika. 

It’s not a question. The man smiles in admission, something proud under the edges. “What can I do for you,” he says, as though this were an ordinary business meeting and he wasn’t being threatened in his own office. 

Pakunoda levels her gun at him. “We’re looking for a set of blueprints.”

The man laughs, low and sinuous. “I’m afraid I can’t show you anything specific. Client confidentiality, you understand.”

“Of course,” says Kurapika, lowering his arm in a falsely conciliatory gesture before calling up his dowsing chain. 

The mirrors facing them fragment, in that moment, into a multiplicity of arrow-shaped slivers that hurtle towards Pakunoda and Kurapika. His dowsing chain running elliptically through the air, Kurapika halts the majority of the shower in the middle of its trajectory, a handful of pieces embedding themselves into his sides and the flesh of his upper arms. Pakunoda, who has flattened herself against the adjacent wall, bears similar minor injuries. 

Teeth bared in sheer annoyance, Kurapika flicks his wrist and the dowsing chain wraps itself around the man, immobilizing him. Pakunoda stalks up to the desk and leans forward, dropping both hands on the man’s shoulders. “Where are the blueprints for the Aleksanteri Casino, and how are they encrypted?”

The man looks up at her, face shining with the indignation of having been so soundly defeated. “I couldn’t possibly tell you.”

But Kurapika can see Pakunoda from the side, and he detects the crescent of a smile. “That’s exactly what I needed to know,” she says, bringing one hand up to stroke the man’s face, “thank you.”

The confusion walled up behind his eyes doesn’t dissipate with the introduction of a bullet between them. 

Kurapika withdraws his chain. Pakunoda opens the file cabinet behind the desk, rummages through it, and pulls out a data stick, dropping it into her purse. “It’s just a block cipher,” she tells Kurapika, “Shalnark can handle it.”

They re-enter the maze. “A casino,” Kurapika says, “what’s there that’s so interesting?”

Kurapika almost walks into Pakunoda as she stops suddenly in front of him. “You’ve never heard of Aleksanteri? Just  _ wait _ .”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter kicked my damn ass for about two months, y'all. Updating regularly is difficult for me because I'm studying for my doctoral exams right now. Thank you for your patience, and for all your wonderful comments, I truly thrive off of them! I can also be found on twitter @queerapika, and on tumblr at midorimashintarous. Please come bug me!

**Author's Note:**

> While I can't guarantee timely updates, I can promise that this fic will be completed by the end of the summer. Five chapters is what I have planned at the moment, but that may change. If you liked it, feel free to subscribe, and comments/kudos are most sincerely appreciated. Thank you to everyone who's supported this ridiculously self-indulgent fic, I'm seriously grateful for you guys.


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